Dissolving the Veils of Illusion

I'm taking up this topic more specifically for the "After the Awakening" section of this blog. While nothing is mutually exclusive in my writing as far as the different parts of your spiritual path, some things are a little more specific to a given rhythm than others. So while many of you are still only cultivating your spiritual path and others are still just embracing the awakening and are in the initial "Holy Shit" phase (which can last days to years, btw), this post is for those who have settled into the awakened state and are finding that there is still deep and profound shifting at work within them.

Resting In Your Natural Life Rhythms

I have mentioned before that the awakened self brings us into our natural life rhythms. It's as if we were trapped in a seed and buried under concrete for most of our lives. After coming out from under all of that, we still continue to grow. But now, it doesn't feel like the weight of the world is stopping us. However, we do find that there are more intense and less intense cycles of our growth. Change has not stopped. Resting also means movement.

With that, we continue to remove veils of illusion on more and more subtle levels. This may be more or less surprising to you. In any way that your ego has remained and thought it was "there," you suddenly find that there is oh-so-much more to learn and to discover within you. You find more lies and self-deceptions. The self-effacing ego will think that it has failed or that it still needs to get it "all right" before moving on with life, but we never "get it all right." I'm not even sure what that means. All we do is the best we can with what we know in the moment, but the light within us will continue to show our ignorance and our darkness. So again and again, we embrace that light as we continue to grow into whatever natural vibration or level of awareness we naturally want to be it.

Letting Go of Any Remaining Goals

Before I talk too much about this topic, I have to encourage you to let go of any remaining goals. This really isn't a post for the beginner who is trying to work out a lot of things. With what I'll talk about next, it will seem discouraging to the novice ego that is trying to heal a lot of big core issues, possibly even trauma, as well as for the beginner who is trying to create a perfect, continually happy existence through spirituality. Please go to my starting out section instead.

This post really is for those of you who have felt and released a lot of the pain and illusions you've lived under. Now as you deepen further into the awakened state, you must let go of any remaining goals and ideas of attainment. I occasionally get emails from people saying that they want to achieve "full realization," but most people do not know what this means. Furthermore, in turning that aspiration into a goal, they have placed themselves in an impossible position. How do you achieve that which is already here? Where do you go if there is no "there" to travel to? Going inward may seem like a game or cheat to the ego mind still filled with goals and ideas of attainment on the spiritual path. While things shift, they also stay the same. There is nothing to do but to trust and relax into what is already arising from within.

The Illusion of Time

I am not going to try and outline all the types of illusion there are, but I will mention a few that are fairly common. According to one spiritual tradition, there are 36 veils of illusion that separate us from total and complete consciousness, but those types of numbers are of little use to me on this path. I encourage you rather to trust in your own soul's natural understanding of what you need in this lifetime. You will go where you need to if you simply trust in your own inner knowing.

With that said, time is an illusion. After you've worked through a lot of the most constricting illusions in your spiritual path (cultural illusions are a good example--like how you should look, how much money you should earn, if you should have a family/relationship, etc.), then you start to hit the big ones. This may seem surprising, but while the cultural illusions are some of the most toxic, they are generally not that big compared to deceptions like the illusion of time. For those still firmly rooted in the physical world, suggesting that time is an illusion seems like sheer nonsense. Hence, you can understand my warning about going to other blogs on this site to continue your path as is appropriate for you.

For those of you who are awake, you've been watching time melt away minute by minute, hour by hour. The moments start to look the same. I have at least one friend who has begun to travel to different times in her own life. Forward, backward, side-to-side, time is just an illusion. This is also how some of you can so easily tell the future. While the future is always in flux, it is still anchored in this moment, so it is here and now as well as not. Even in reading about this, you may feel a part of the old rational mind turning to goo or wanting to categorize this as nonsense. But if you are heading towards releasing the illusion of time, I encourage you to just let it go. You won't vaporize into nothingness. You will simply see even more deeply all the things in motion and at play in yourself and the world around you.

The Illusion of Separateness and Becoming Non-Local

This planet we live on is also an illusion. It's an illusion of solidity in an ever-changing universe. It has already been destroyed by our sun going super-nova, and it has not yet been born from the Big Bang. One of my newer students offered a beautiful experience about how he suddenly saw this truth. He saw how the chair in the room where he was meditating was not real, but he was also the chair. And the chair changed depending on how he saw it. He saw how he was not separated from the chair at all. For all you movie-goers, you'll remember the phrase, "There is no spoon." And there is a spoon. And you are the spoon.

In realizing this, you are coming into the deeper awareness that all is interconnected and all is one. In that space of oneness, you are no longer a local being. What I mean by this is that illusion has us believe that we are just this body in this one spot of the universe. But this is not true. As you drop more deeply within yourself, some of you will find that you can interconnect more and more to anyone and anything. Initially, this can be overwhelming or scary (depending on how committed your ego is to the old delusions). But as you rest more deeply into this, you will see that it is just natural to how you exist. (Can you see a theme here about moving into a natural state? Keep this in mind with any shift that is arising for you, and it can help ease the transition).

With that, some of you have some big work to do on this planet. You may soon come to find that this body is only an anchoring point for your spirit in this realm and dimension. Through you and anchored by you, your spirit may be doing other things, connecting to other people, healing the planet in specific or general ways, and other errands that spirits do that don't necessarily get relayed down to our ego consciousnesses. If you are aware of some of these soul level errands, it is best to watch them even if it feels like you are doing them. As you can move more naturally in this awareness, you may start to easily direct these loving intentions in alignment with the spirit plan of you, this planet, and God.

The Illusion of Growth and Change

This illusion is even more deep, and it probably sounds like it is contradicting the rest of this blog. This is how it is the further out into truth you get; the language we have fails. It was only ever a set of signs pointing at something, and now we are running out of signs. We are running out of signs to say that nothing was ever changing. This is much deeper down in the depths of consciousness. This is like the depths of the deepest lake you can imagine and being in waters that simply are at rest. While the top levels of the water can be extremely turbulent and changing all the time, the deeper ones hardly seem to move at all. Yet they are interconnected to the whole of the lake. So while the young man turns into the middled aged man turns into the elderly man, nothing has changed within. The spirit is the same. It does not age. It does not grow. It is.

For those of you moving into this space of profundity, enjoy! This is a beautiful space. Do not seek outside confirmation or validation beyond this blog if you are reading it. Trust and allow this perfection you are.

The Continued Arising and Dissolution of Illusions

You are welcome to message me or comment about different illusions that you are working through. I would prefer to focus on the deeper ones. As I've mentioned, while cultural illusions are super restrictive and tend to get the bulk of our initial attention, I am much more interested in hearing how some of you are experiencing the deeper dissolution of illusions on the level of the soul. What is it like for you? How does it feel to be awash in oneness?

You may find that illusions may re-arise for you, and that is fine. From the depths, we re-emerge to take on an ego name and residence to pay our taxes, but this does not have to dominate our waking life. There is so much ease in this space that much of what we feared we'd forget to do or would lose (like being a good parent), now becomes so much more effortless. If a child cries because it is upset, we know it is not our fault and love the child unconditionally anyway. And if you'd like a good book that discusses the dissolution of illusions, you might check out "Siddhartha" by Herman Hesse. It is a very wise book indeed.

Making Your Way in the World

Surviving in this world isn't as hard as most of us make it. There's nothing we can keep from this life, so why not live in love? Why not allow the arising of love and embracing of it in its multiple shapes and forms, darknesses and light. This sounds like deep stuff, but it is not. It is only what has been buried under illusion. The good news is that any of you can take out your karmic cutting shears and start cutting these illusions away. In freeing yourself, you will find it so much easier to breathe, and the world is so much more magnificent and marvelous than you'd ever imagined before.

Today's picture comes from Becky Stiller. You can see more of her beautiful photos on this Flickr link.In this video, I talk specifically about the illusion of time.